Mapping BP

The story of what happens if you try to put together a “system view” of a giant global corporation from their own public disclosures. By pulling annual returns and other filings the BP Group files around the world, the OpenOil team compiled a network graph of 1,180 affiliates in 84 jurisdictions in layers of ownership going 12 deep.

The essay discusses what the data set shows, what it doesn’t show, how such corporate maps could be built in an open data space, and what the implications are for the future of corporate governance.